The Inquisitr » news corp

Is It Time For A Bing/ Microsoft Boycott?

Duncan Riley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:10:38 +0000

Following on from news last month that Microsoft was in talks with AP to give AP new stories a better run on Bing comes news today that Microsoft is in talks with News Corp to exclusively feature their content in Bing, as opposed to Google as well.

The concept of a News Corp/ Microsoft tie-up has been speculated on for months since News Corp came out and said that they plan to pull their content from Google and other search engines.

The talks between AP and Microsoft were sickening in themselves: instead of endeavoring to offer the best search results no matter what the origin of the content, Microsoft is willing to sell itself out for favor or monetary gain. Today’s news is simply an extension of that: who cares about the best search results, because Microsoft is willing to sell those to the highest bidder (or in this case, them paying News Corp for the rights.)

Despite the many positives from Microsoft in recent years, old habits have died hard in certain parts of the business. Prostituting the results in Bing and delivering results that aren’t the best results, but instead those that come from business partnerships is the worst of the old Microsoft coming once again to the fore.

On one hand, getting News Corp content out of Google, which is still there despite how easy it would be for News Corp to take it out, is a positive for everyone else. But likewise, Microsoft sets a precedent in a deal that recognizes that News Corp content in a search engine (be it in part) has to be paid for, as opposed to being rightfully fair use (to the point that News Corp can pull it all out tomorrow.)

Still, unless Microsoft pays for reading rights for their users, any deal with News Corp will only push readers to Google; after all Murdoch has said they’re going to charge for access to their content. What would most people prefer: independent but free content on Google, vs pay to view content pushed to the front of Bing.

Microsoft, a company that has tried awfully hard in the last five years to become a true community and fair player, may never give up its old ways. Whether we should boycott Microsoft/ Bing I’ll leave to others, but I know that if Microsoft signs deals like this, my occasional use of Bing will halt immediately, and I’d bet I’m not the only one who does that.

Time for Google, and Microsoft, to call Murdock’s bluff

Steven Hodson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:57:20 +0000

There’s been a lot of go-round this past week about Rupert Murdock yanking everyone’s chain about pulling their content from Google unless the search giant is willing to cough up some money for the privilege of indexing News Corp properties. In fact both Duncan and I have written about the whole stupid mess here at The Inquisitr.

The most consistent statement that everyone has been making about the threats is that if Murdock was serious all it takes is a single line in the Robot.txt file on any of the News Corp servers and the bullshit poker game is done. On the other side is a bunch of folks saying that this is nothing more than a bargaining ploy by Murdock to try and get all the search companies to cough up some cash for access.

Well I’ve got another suggestion but this one goes to both Google and Microsoft.

Call his bluff.

Seriously. Pull all of News Corp content from your indexes and don’t have your search crawlers pull in any new data. After all neither of you are obligated in any fashion to index Murdock’s content. There are no laws saying that you have to index News Corp media sites.

If Murdock seriously thinks that he has the upper hand in this, that Google will collapse without the content and that Microsoft will truly do anything, no matter how stupid, in order to get even a percentage point over Google by paying News Corp blackmail money then I think it’s time to show him otherwise.

All Murdock is getting right now is more and more press as we babble on endlessly about the momentous battle of the search titans against the news titans. It’s bullshit people. Seriously. It’s all a game and I think that if Microsoft and Google in conjunction shut down any spidering of News Corp media properties we’d see in a very short time just who has the better hand here.

And it isn’t Murdock.

Think not?

Then check out Jeff Jarvis’ post today. He has some nice looking graphs showing just how little the 148 German newspapers who signed the Hamburg Declaration really matter to Google.

Here’s a hint….

… dick all.

C’mon Google and Microsoft – call an end to this farce. Call Murdock’s bluff. We’ll love ya for it.

News Corp Dithers on Google Pullout While AP Asks For More Traffic

Duncan Riley — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:01:06 +0000

News Corp has indicated that its expected withdrawal from Google search results won’t be for months, while on the same day AP has met with Google asking for more traffic.

News Corp’s chief digital officer Jonathan Miller told the Monaco Media Forum that the withdrawal from Google’s search results will occur in “months and quarters – not weeks.” He went on to say that “the traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

Across the Atlantic, Tom Curley, president of the Associated Press, was reportedly ready to meet Friday with officials at Google about getting a better deal for links to AP stories provided by the search engine.

Curley wants Google to elevate the ranking of AP stories so they appear more prominently in search results. He also wants a cut of the revenue from ads Google runs alongside the top news stories. Curley claims that AP gets paid for less than 15 percent of its stories on the Web.

What does it say about News Corp’s stance when the main body owned by media outlets in the United State, the main cheerleader against new media is actually asking for more Google traffic, the same traffic that Murdoch and Miller say is worthless?

The delay to News Corp pulling out of Google once again proves that News Corp is all talk and no action when it comes to their constant attacks against the likes of Google. There’s ZERO technological basis for the delay because as we’ve repeated time and time again: one line in a Robots.txt file is all that’s required. If they had the courage of their convictions they’d be taking themselves out of Google not next week, not tomorrow, but today.

Part of this story from AHN under license.

What’s Old is New: Why Murdoch Doesn’t Get New Media

Duncan Riley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:59:42 +0000

Much has been written online over the last two days following News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch’s chit-chat with Sky News Australia (see our coverage here and here.)

There’s a ton a different points that can be dissected and debated in the interview, but there was one thing Murdoch said that has been bugging me since I heard him say it: “no web sites anywhere in the world make serious money.”

I don’t dispute that the statement is wrong, but it lacks context and a broader understanding of the space. The obvious point is the definition of “serious money,” which to Murdoch means the hundreds of millions that News Corp makes. He’s entitled to define serious that way, but in reflecting on that we need only to take a look at the rise of News Corp to see that the “serious” money he talks about was a short term aberration over the much longer period of media as a whole.

The News Corp story is one of those Australian fairytale stories that many in Australia know something about. But the best history I’ve read recently came from an American, in the form of Michael Wolff’s biography “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.”

The biography charts the rise of Murdoch from his inheritance of a single Adelaide newspaper through to the takeover by News Corp of the Wall Street Journal. The book places in context the newspaper (and broader media) industry as it was, and how Murdoch came to change the scene as part of the rise of the media barons in the late 70s and 1980s.

It details succinctly how newspapers were previously often small or family run affairs, often without huge profits or managed to their full potential. Couple to this was the stratospheric rise in newspaper advertising throughout the 1980’s, and the media consolidation as smaller outlets closed or sold out.

Indeed you could say that before the likes of Rupert Murdoch, no one was making serious money from newspapers. Where have we heard that line before?

Unlike newspapers, many with histories going back hundreds of years, the current crop of new media startups are often only years old. This is a time of immense competition online where new models are being experimented on, with the successful models being used as a basis to grow and expand (see AOL for one classic example.) Some are making money, others aren’t, but of course none are making “serious” money yet, just like newspapers once weren’t either.

Perhaps in old age, and combined with a self professed obsession with print, Murdoch can’t see the parallels starring him in the face?

Bronwen Clune told the Media140 conference in Sydney last week that she doesn’t like the label of new media because what we label new media really is just a part of the broader media landscape. Not only was she right, I’d extend that further, because although the online nature may make it new of sorts, the progression of the industry really isn’t anything of the sort, because what we’ve seen in the past with heritage media is now being reflected online, be it at a much faster pace.

Online media may not be making “serious” money yet, but what’s to stop a 21st century Murdoch buying up online outlets to create an entity that does make serious money, or for an existing conglomerate to grow and compete with the media of old? History can and does repeat itself, rich with the knowledge of those that have succeeded and failed before.

(Image: Department of the Internets)

Murdoch and News Corp don’t deserve web traffic so STFU and pull the plug

Steven Hodson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:13:14 +0000

I’m getting really sick and tired on this waffling back and forth by old screwed up news organizations like the AP and News Corp. All they seem to do is constantly whine and cry about how all those evil news aggregators are being lead by the very devil itself – Google.

The newest shot across the broadside of course was a interview in Australia with Murdoch where he alluded to the the fact that all News Corp properties; in order to show Google who was boss, were considering pulling it’s content from the search engine.

Look, there is already a way that Murdock and company could have done this before now; as he has been told many times already, but if News Corp is staffed by a bunch of idiots that don’t know what a Robots.txt file is then News Corp, and Murdock, deserve everything coming to them.

At any point News Corp could have added a couple of lines to the Robots.txt file found on 99.9999999% of all websites on the Internet and Google couldn’t have indexed News Corp content one iota. Zip. Nada. Done Like Dinner.

But of course that wouldn’t have given Rupert the PR platform of the wounded and wrong businessman whose multi-billion dollar business is being destroyed by these evil upstarts that are out to destroy everything we hold dear.

Not only that but Murdock is trying to question the legality of the Fair Use Doctrine as actually being illegal – good luck with that ya putz. Better men and businesses have tried that route only to be slapped back to their boardrooms with their tails between their legs and licking each others wounds.

As Jolie O’Dell at ReadWriteWeb points out at the end of her post about this ‘threat’ one has to wonder just how much the pulling of News Corp content from Google would really hurt the search company

If, however, News Corp decides to deny Google bots access to its content, Google news will likely suffer little. Between the Associated Press, Reuters, and other print and broadcast news services, one wonders how much the absence of News Corp listings – primarily represented by the Wall Street Journal and FOX – will affect Google News.

Look this crap forever spewing out of Murdock is getting old, boring and more like hot air bluster from a man who doesn’t have the first clue of how the whole new industry is changing. Changing in such a way that it won’t care if News Corp decides to come along for the ride or not.

So here’s a suggestion Murdock. Shut the hell up already, tell your obviously deficient web jockeys to get a clue about the Robot.txt file, and pull the plug. No-one is going to miss you then just as nobody really gives a damn about you now.

An era is coming to an end and you Mr. Murdock don’t have a clue so please close the door on your way out because we’ve all got more important things to deal with than whether you are dumb enough to commit corporate suicide or not.

Epic Win: News Corp Likely To Remove Content From Google

Duncan Riley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:11:40 +0000

News Corp founder and CEO Rupert Murdoch has told an interview with Sky News Australia that News Corp will likely remove News Corp content from Google.

The revelation came early in the interview, after Murdoch claimed that Google and others are stealing News Corp content in response to a question about who he was talking about when he talked about plagiarists. “The people who simply pick up everything to run with, and steal our stories…they just take them..without payment. That’s Google, Microsoft, Ask.com..a whole lot of people.”

Murodch claimed that readers who visit News Corp sites via search offer little value to advertisers, and that News Corp would rather have fewer people coming to their websites, but paying. Asked why News hasn’t made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: “I think we will….but that’s when we start charging.”

Murdoch also claims that News Corp believes that the doctrine of Fair Use can be challenged in court and “barred altogether.”

As Mumbrella notes, many sites (including this one) have called on News Corp and others to use Robots.txt to take their content out of Google, a simple change that would put to bed the Google stealing our content argument once and for all.

The full interview as follows:

Profits at Murdoch’s News Corp. Jump 11 Percent

AHN — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:23:43 +0000

New York, NY (AHN) – News Corp., the media giant with interests in newspapers, film and television, reported an 11 percent gain in first-quarter profit on Thursday.

The New York-based company said net income rose to $571 million, or 22 cents a share, from $515 million, or 20 cents, 12 months earlier. Analysts had expected 18 cents a share.

Revenue was $7.2 billon, a 4.1 percent decline.

The bulk of the earnings came from News Corp.’s film and video division. Profits for the Twentieth Century Fox film studios were up 56 percent to a record $391 million.

The Fox New cable channel increased operating income by 79 percent, the channel’s highest-every quarterly profit. The cable division as a whole saw operating income grow 41 percent to $495 million.

Profits at the Fox TV stations and broadcast network fell 54 percent to $38 million. Income from newspaper and information services plummeted from $134 million to $25 million. The company owns the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, as well as two papers in the United Kingdom and three in Australia.

News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch said he planned to increase revenue by instituting fees on several of the company’s venues, including for news on Web sites and retransmission fees from television providers that carry the Fox broadcast network.

In October, the company announced it would charge for electronic access to the Wall Street Journal from mobile devices and hike prices for a professional version of the Journal Web site.

News Corp. (NWSA) shares were up 3.2 percent on the Nasdaq at 2:41 p.m.

How News Corp slandered this site

Duncan Riley — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:44:11 +0000

There’s nothing funny about being defamed and accused of undertaking illegal activities, and that’s precisely what Australia’s biggest newspaper group is currently doing to The Inquisitr, and by extension myself today.

Over two posts Wednesday evening (Australian Eastern) we covered the raid by Anonymous against the Australian Government. Those posts relied heavily on information publicly available on another site (which was linked to in the first post) about the raid, and included statements of intent from Anonymous itself. The second post was an attempt to live blog the raid by monitoring sites Anonymous are known to frequent, Twitter, and by checking whether any Australian Government sites were slow to load or offline (you know, basic journalism.) Both posts were clearly written under my name, and quotes from the group were clearly marked as such, and in one case in a block quote gray enclosure.

Indeed, I even went as far as saying in the first post

I legally can’t say I’m in favor of what Anonymous is doing here, and I won’t be participating in the raid, however there will be many who support any effort to highlight the Australian Government’s attempt to introduce Chinese style censorship in a country that is suppose to be democratic and free.

Incitement to commit a crime in Australia is illegal, and not only didn’t I endorse the effort, I specifically said I had nothing to do with it.

So how it is then that the News Corp papers in Australia are running stories claiming that among other things that the “hacker” wrote the posts here at The Inquisitr. To quote the article:

A message posted on the Inquisitor website by the hacker, identified as Anonymous, stated that the action was in response to a Federal Government proposal to introduce mandatory internet filtering….

The posting complains that the proposal to introduce internet filtering would block legal content, and take censorship to levels like that seen in China.

It should be noted that the China reference was one that I made, they didn’t actually split the quotes and my commentary, but instead lumped it all as “the hacker” talking.

But it gets better, because then they extensively quote my live blog post as coming from the hacker.

The posting, titled “Anonymous vs the Australian Government”, also gives a blow-by-blow account of the hacker’s progress.

“In two minutes from when I type this, Anonymous is declaring war on the Australian Government over its decision to implement Draconian internet censorship,” the post said.

“Tick tick tick.

“Update: 7pm: and so it begins.

“7:05pm (AEST), Ministers page is slow to load, but still up.

“7:11pm weve confirmed on site (via a source) that the sites due to be attacked have been taken down from the coordination page, possibly before the raid.

“7:18pm pm.gov.au DOWN!

“7:21pm Kevin Rudd’s page is down completely. Strike one to Anonymous.”

News Corporation is fond of attacking new media, with John Hartigan himself having a particular dislike of bloggers and blogging. Yet what we have here is yet another case of even the most basic fact checking not being undertaken, and in the process The Inquisitr, and by extension myself (as the author of the posts referred to in article) being accused of undertaking serious criminal activities, activities which I would note are currently subject to an investigation by the Australian Federal Police.

Despite emailing the editor of News.com.au, The Australian Newspaper, and The Herald Sun, I’ve not had one response. The Editor of the rival newspaper The Age, who ran a similar story, not only immediately responded, but pulled the references to The Inquisitr in less than 30 minutes

Are we all watching the world’s biggest game of bluff poker?

Steven Hodson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:54:35 +0000

The newspaper world is changing and struggling to find its way online in a fashion that will see the leaders of the conglomerates that own them maintain their wealth and power. Zachary M. Seward on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog thinks that The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are heavy into the quietest newspaper war in the country.

As papers like the Globe suffer, the Journal and the Times are engaged in a pitched but unusually quiet battle for readers outside the New York metro area who might be persuaded to abandon their local dailies. In a small development on Friday, the Times announced a deal that will extend newsstand sales and home delivery of the newspaper to Nashville, Tenn. That becomes the 26th North American city where the Times is printed, and I’ve mapped them above.

Both the Times and the Journal are working to make themselves more appealing as first-read newspapers for national readers in largely affluent markets.

Meanwhile Ryan Tate at Gawker: Valleywag lets us know that both Rupert Murdoch and Steven Brill are promising to have all their newspapers charging for content by next year.

Today in the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz writes that there’s an "emerging consensus" that Murdoch and Brill are leading the way to the future, in which people pay to read news on the Web. The only trouble: Whichever publishers are first to charge for content will be first to see their Web traffic drop — like 90% — if they wall off everything to just subscribers. Especially if their competitors don’t also erect their own paywalls. It could be catastrophic for smaller brands who wall off their content while everyone stays free.

Beating the drum of paywalls Murdoch is quoted in a Financial Times post saying

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online.

Here’s the thing though, as Tate noted in his post the first company to actually cross that line and erect paywalls across all their online news outlets is going to take a heavy hit because people at this point will not fork over their hard earned money for something they can get elsewhere for free. It’s not like Murdoch and Brill can get together over dinner and decide on a day and time where both their online news empires start charging money. Well they could but if they got caught the penalties because of antitrust laws would make it a painful exercise – not to mention potentially very expensive.

So here we have two the biggest players in the newspaper industry threatening to start making people pay for the news; but who’s going to do it first and take the hit they have to know will come as a result?

Then can that person be assured that the other(s) will do the same or will they bask in the increase of traffic that will come at the expense of their competitor?

Who is going to blink first?

Media buyer claims News Corp preparing to sue Google, Yahoo over news services

Duncan Riley — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:34:41 +0000

Harold Mitchell, the founder of one of Australia’s largest advertising groups and a man connected to News Corp locally, said in a radio interview Thursday (local time) that News Corp. is preparing to sue Google and Yahoo to stop both from linking to, and quoting News Corp content.

The claim was made as part of a piece on News Corp’s financial results played on ABC News Radio (I heard it at 3:35pm AEST, but it was probably played throughout the day.) There’s no official transcript available, so the following is taken direct from the audio, and is as accurate as I could type listening to a replay later.

Peter Ryan (ABC Business Editor): Peter Mitchell, chairman of media buying group Mitchell Communications, says that Rupert Murdoch could be in for the fight of his life.
Mitchell: Rupert Murdoch has now accepted the challenge of charging people for content, very difficult because for more than a decade its been given away free.
Ryan: Harold Mitchell says that News Corporation is already preparing a legal battle to prevent Google and Yahoo from taking news material and using it free of charge.
Mitchell: the fight is on two fronts. One is to stop people like Google and organizations like Google from simply taking the information and making it available from inside their product. And the second thing is to get the product in such a way that subscribers are prepared to pay. It’s a fight that has to be won.

There’s no way to confirm whether Mitchell was speculating or does actually have knowledge of pending legal action, although the language in the interview would suggest that he does have some knowledge of pending legal action.

I’m tending towards the latter: Mitchell is regarded as one of the most preeminent media commentators in this country, and he’s not the sort of person who would offer flippant speculation in an interview like this.

The one, and main outstanding question is whether the said legal action would take place in Australia, and/or the United States as well. Australia doesn’t have strong fair use provisions as is the case in the United States, so legal action in Australia would stand a better chance of success.

The stupidity though, as always, is that this conspiracy about Google and others stealing from the likes of News Corp is absurd when all it takes it one line in a robots.txt file to take that content out of Google and the rest within hours, if that’s what News Corp. really wanted.

MySpace turns to gaming to compete

Chris Greenhough — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:00:36 +0000

MySpace, that social networking site you last looked at in 2006 before being seduced by Facebook’s crisp blues and clean whites, is now looking to gaming to help it compete. Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California, News Corp digital head Jonathan Miller told Reuters:

“MySpace is and will be more in the future a gaming platform, a space for people to meet and play games.”

Miller was keen to point out that gaming would be a “theme” of MySpace, rather than its primary purpose. There’s no doubt that MySpace could do with a shot in the arm – in terms of unique monthly visitors, Facebook surpassed its gaudier rival in April 2008, and hasn’t looked back since. Yet Miller is confident that gaming is where the future lies:

“If you look at the big activities online, games right now is number three. Communications, search, games. So it’s clearly going to be a major focus.”

We’ll see whether he’s right in good time, I suppose. Until then, days since I logged into MySpace: 971.

[Via Reuters]

Australian News Corp chief attacks Google, bloggers

Duncan Riley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:10:55 +0000

John Hartigan, the Chief Executive of News Ltd, the Australian arm of News Corp has joined in with his colleagues in the United States today in bashing Google and bloggers.

In a wide ranging lecture about how News Ltd was better than the rest and how original content has a future, Hatigan’s attack on Google nearly copied the exact same wording as that used by his company colleagues in the Unites States. “The most profitable sites, in fact the only ones making serious money are the sites that aggregate news, like Google and Yahoo” said Hartigan. “They pay nothing for content produced by newspaper journalists but make money by supplying it in easily searchable forms online.” At least he didn’t use the word parasite.

Of course the fact that News Ltd can easily remove their content from Google tomorrow, and that they encourage linking via social sharing buttons on each story may have been missed by Hartigan, but facts should never get in the way of a good story…well, if you’re the head of Australia’s largest tabloid newspaper publisher at least.

Then he went after blogs and independent sites, despite News Ltd itself running a sizable number of blogs (indeed I’m reading the speech notes from Andrew Bolt’s blog)

Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications. Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

And just to be clear: News Ltd doesn’t publish blogs…oh wait, not only do they publish blogs, they’ve actually signed up bloggers to write for them.

You know though that the bash is going to be serious when someone starts quoting king luddite Andrew Keen, and Hartigan managed to offer a range of quotes from Keen…oh wait, I thought only bloggers didn’t provide original thought and quoted others extensively.

“Citizen journalists, he says, simply don’t have the resources to bring us reliable news. They lack not only expertise and training but access to decision makers and reliable sources” Hartigan says of Keen, while in the same speech noting on their coverage of the Victorian bushfires was:

Who can forget the images of the fireman sharing his water bottle with the Sam the Koala, perhaps the iconic image of the tragedy? The images that appeared on television around the world carried the water mark not of Seven, Nine or Ten but of heraldsun.com.au.

Except that the image was published online until The Herald Sun picked it up. Double bonus: the picture was taken by a firefighter, not a professional journalist. Citizen journalism at work? Lets ask Hartigan:

The fires were an example of how journalism should directly touch readers and not always remain detached on the sidelines. Alongside traditional reporting from the scene, we had incredible eyewitness accounts from readers, including amazing pics and video.

Hang on, now I’m confused. Hartigan says citizen journalism isn’t worth shit, but then he boasts how The Herald Sun used citizen journalists to supplement its coverage.

I think though the best line was when Hartigan tried to claim that the problem with newspapers in the United States and the UK was circulation, or as Andrew Bolt said, Hartigan noted “that the crashes in circulation seen in the US and Britain have not been seen here.” That may be true in the UK, but it’s not true in the US. Yes, some papers have declined, but the overall trend hasn’t been that great. The real reason newspapers are in trouble in the US and UK is a crash in ADVERTISING, figures easily confirmed by the relevant industry bodies in both countries. The trend started before the recession, and was driven in a large part by online alternatives. But hey, why let facts get in the way.

I’ll repeat what I wrote on June 16: if Hartigan really believes that Google and others are stealing from News Ltd, then take the News Ltd out of Google. It’s one line in a Robots.txt file. If Hartigan refuses to, then he has ZERO credibility on the subject of Google.

Another who cares Hulu post – this time get your wallet ready

Steven Hodson — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:22:10 +0000

Over the last couple of days I’ve been seeing a couple of posts showing up suggesting that people get ready to open their wallets soon if they want to keep using Hulu. Now for the rest of the world this won’t matter one bit because well besides the US and soon (as of September) the UK no-one else can use the service because it’s geotarded.

That hasn’t stop the newly installed head honcho of News Corp, one of the players involved with Hulu, Mr. Jonathan Miller from suggesting that he envisions a time where at least some of the TV shows and movies would only be available through subscription.

Miller, whose last job was running AOL (parent of Daily Finance), prefaced his remark by noting that he won’t attend his first Hulu board meeting until Monday, so the scenario he foresees is merely his own speculation. But, he continued, "in my opinion the answer could be yes. I don’t see why over time that shouldn’t happen. I don’t think it’s on the agenda for Monday [but] it seems to me that over time that could be a logical thing."

Source: Daily Finance

Now the angst over his statement hasn’t really started rolling through the tech blogosphere because everyone is still sucking up to the the Twitter teat and since what he had to say was more than a 140 characters I’m not surprised it’s been missed. That will change the moment word hits that Hulu will be seriously going down that road – which it will.

The only thing I can say is – what do you expect. Just look at who’s involved here – News Corp (Fox), NBC, ABC and Disney. The only network not involved is CBS and they seem to be the only ones by the way who seem to have a grip on how this new medium works and doing a good job at it.

Unfortunately though when Hulu starts dipping into your wallet most of the world won’t even care but that is what happens when you lock us out. So enjoy your free Hulu while it last.

Murdoch says to get ready to pay up

Steven Hodson — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:19:33 +0000

Rupert Murdoch, the man behind News Corp, says that it’s time to fix a “malfunctioning” business model when it comes to online news – specifically his newspapers. To do this he is expected to follow the Wall Street Journal subscription model and expect us to open up our wallets for his other online newspapers. This move to fix what he sees as a problem will happen within the year.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience," he said.

Source: Guardian Online (still free)

The only problem with this is that as smart as Murdoch might be he seems to be missing the global nature of the Web. The world of newspapers, especially the ones that made Murdoch insanely rich, on the other hand are for the most part regional. Exceptions do exist where some newspapers have broken through this regional limitation much as Murdoch’ Wall Street Journal has. It is also a paper that many people are willing to pay a subscription for. This mentality doesn’t apply to the other 99% of newspapers that are online.

The idea that readers are going to be willing to pay a subscription for the same news that they can find at a hundred other news sites, blogs or otherwise, is just a little hard to see happening. While news is pretty well unique the interpretation or presentation of it isn’t. There is nothing in the way news is presented on the web that would make it a commodity that people will be willing to pay for.

The Wall Street Journal is unique among online news properties and is a member of a very exclusive club. That doesn’t mean though that Murdoch is going to be able to turn the rest of his news properties into the same kind of thing. In trying to do that all he will be doing is creating another Wall Street Journal. Just how many of those do we need in this day and age?

I thought so .. good luck with that plan Rupert.

Murdoch targets Google over Google News, lawsuit to follow?

Duncan Riley — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:23:02 +0000

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch targeted Google on Thursday over the use of newspaper headlines in Google News.

Murdoch rhetorically asked an industry event in Washington D.C., “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” going on to respond “‘Thanks, but no thanks.”

Gregory Rutchik, chairman of The Arts and Technology Law Group told Forbes that this could be the precursor to something more: “Murdoch wants to be paid for his newspaper assets. His statements may be a precursor to a lawsuit that would bring Google to the bargaining table to figure out just how to do that.”

Google has always rightly claimed that their use of headlines and short extracts constitutes fair use. Google also notes that they send 300 million page views to newspaper sites every month.

Because all good stories should end with a kook, Anthony Moor, deputy managing editor of the Dallas Morning News Online and a director of the Online News Association told Forbes “I wish newspapers could act together to negotiate better terms with companies like Google. Better yet, what would happen if we all turned our sites off to search engines for a week? By creating scarcity, we might finally get fair value for the work we do.”

Why make it a week? make it permanent, because there’s just going to be such a great big void of news online. Must. Stop. Laughing.

Fox Interactive Media cuts 5% of workforce

Duncan Riley — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:34:47 +0000

Fox Interactive Media (FIM), the digital division of New Corp is laying off about 5% of its work force, or around 100 people.

The cuts, which started in the last month according to the Wall Street Journal, are happening gradually unit by unit in all areas of the business, including MySpace and Photobucket.

A FIM spokesman said in a statement that “this is part of a larger effort we’re making to put FIM in the best possible position to succeed now and, more importantly, to emerge even stronger once the markets recover. It’s important to note that we continue to hire in many areas.”

Murdoch: newspapers will survive, but physical format irrelevant

Duncan Riley — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:03:56 +0000

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch delivered the annual Boyer Lecture on Australia’s ABC Sunday, and while he was positive on the future for newspapers, it’s what he had to say about print editions which makes the talk interesting.

In “The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees,” Murdoch said that doomsayers who are predicting the Internet will kill off newspapers are “misguided cynics” who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.

Newspapers are already a “source that people can trust,” Murdoch said, giving them an advantage over new mediums such as bloggers reports The Editors Weblog.

The key line though is Murdoch’s admission that the days of the print edition of newspapers are numbered.

“We are moving from news papers to news brands,” he said, and added that while the form of delivery may change, “the potential audience for our content will multiply many times over”.

Mr Murdoch summed it up by saying: “I like the look and feel of newsprint as much as anyone. But our real business isn’t printing on dead trees. It’s giving our readers great journalism and great judgement.”

Murdoch is right: smart newspapers today will become smart online “news brands” of tomorrow. While many are quick to write off newspapers altogether, there is still no reasonable argument I have seen that says that some newspapers can’t turn into online only news sites. The only thing we could argue about is using the term “newspaper” altogether when the last newspaper printing press in the western world prints its last edition, but for all intents and purposes this is semantics based on format, not the actual news producing body.

News Corp profit drops 30%, TV, Movie businesses take big hits

Duncan Riley — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:24:19 +0000

International media conglomerate News Corp. has reported a 30% drop in quarterly profits off the back of big dives in News Corp’s TV and Movie businesses.

News Corp. net income for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 dropped to $515 million, or 20 cents per share, down from $732 million, or 23 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 6.3 percent to $7.5 billion. The results included a $447 million write-off associated with German pay TV operator Premiere AG.

News Corps movie interests led the decline, with revenue from Twentieth Century Fox and other studios down 20% to $1.3 billion. Television revenue fell 15% to $974 million. Ad revenue at News Corp TV stations declined 17%.

Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch revised News Corps forecast for 2009 down, noting a drop of “low to mid-teens” percentage wise for the fiscal year ahead. Murdoch told the media that the forecast was a “clear reflection of the economic downturn, which we believe will persist through fiscal 2009.”

The News Corp internet business Fox Interactive Media (FIM) which includes MySpace saw revenue grow 17% to $220 million.